The temperature of the sea water keeps rising. Today we are giving record data for ocean surface temperature this July. The air is also heating up. And the drought is wreaking havoc in Europe, with the great rivers – Rhine, Danube, Seine, Po – at minimum flow, meadows the color of straw, and dry land and forests. We are living through an exceptionally hot and dry summer. The large fires, like the one in Bordeaux and those in the Iberian Peninsula, are the result of this set of factors that have come to stay. In the metropolises, where most of us live, life is becoming increasingly unbreathable and distressing.

What is happening in Ceuta is, right now, a humanitarian drama. What is happening in Europe, following Ceuta, is an ideological battle between those who see immigration as "an invading danger" and those who want to manage it without naive good intentions, but taking into account the basic human values that, at least on paper, form the European ideal, and the economic reality, with relevant sectors demanding labor (by the way, what has happened to origin-based recruitment?).

Catalan society is engaged in a battle of uncertain outcome against the housing shortage. Access to decent housing is one of the most acute social pain points. Owning property or not is, today, the element that most marks the difference in social status. And in life's peace of mind.

First, the data: 8,233,788. These are the inhabitants of Catalonia as of this Thursday. Up to 72,150 more people than a year ago and 32,000 more than six months ago. We continue to grow due to the arrival of people from abroad. If it were for the birth rate of the natives, we would lose population. Right now there are 2.15 million citizens born outside the State, 26.2% of the total. That is, one in four inhabitants.

It is not the first time we have warned about the critical situation in Catalonia with drugs. The danger signs persist. And they are diverse. Is the population sufficiently aware? Are the administrations sufficiently aware?

The war in Ukraine will reach four and a half years this August since its beginning, with the Russian invasion of February 2022. There are no signs of de-escalation or negotiation between Kyiv and Moscow. Both armies are increasingly targeting civilian objectives. At this point, it has become a war of attrition both at the front and in the rear: military, psychological, political, and economic attrition. Neither side has enough strength to defeat the enemy. One side and the other are seeking a position of advantage, not for victory, but to sit at the future negotiation table from a position of strength.

In the new European migratory crisis due to the serious and dramatic events in Ceuta, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has finally come to the rescue of Pedro Sánchez, who, under the leadership of the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, the far-right and right-wing Europe has sought to position as a danger to the common border-closing migratory policy and, therefore, to the security of the Schengen area. The images and figures of arrivals on the first day impacted public opinion and continental chanceries, and gave rise to positioning the Spanish government in a supposed position of tolerance with illegal immigration, adding to the critical package the recent regularization, to which a supposed "pull effect" was quickly attributed. This Monday, the Spanish PP was still insisting on it.

The 241 million followers he has on his X network have seen Elon Musk compare the massive influx of immigrants, mostly Moroccans, into Ceuta with the zombies from World War Z. Italy has announced border migration controls that will almost certainly affect Moroccans above all, including those born in Europe or those with papers, which will deepen the stigma against a population that has always suffered institutional racism in all EU countries. And most importantly: the death toll attempting to cross the border, many of them minors, climbs every day, and it is assumed that it will far exceed a hundred people, making it the most serious tragedy of its kind in recent times. Some young people have preferred to try everything and risk dying rather than stay in their country. What does this say about Morocco?

More and more people say they avoid the news, and the result is a less informed society and, therefore, a weaker democracy. In countries where journalism is declining, authoritarian populism is gaining ground. But why is the number of citizens choosing to live outside journalistic current affairs growing, who choose not to know, not to ask questions or seek answers, with all that this entails? Many justify it this way: because they believe they are already informed through social networks. Because bad news distresses them. Because it is increasingly difficult for them to distinguish between what is true and what is false. Because they feel overwhelmed: too much impact and too little reliability.

The European far-right, including the Spanish one, is being very quick and forceful in taking advantage of the propagandistic and dramatic gesture of Moroccan migratory pressure on Spain in Ceuta to distance itself from Pedro Sánchez's government, the government of regularization. It doesn't matter that what Meloni, Abascal, and co. call an "invasion" will ultimately have been a one-day episode: the massive arrival has been followed by a massive return. And it doesn't matter that more than fifty young people have died at sea: the far-right leaders have not spoken of this humanitarian drama. What Italy and Finland are concerned with is reinforcing the idea of the need to fortify Europe, an idea that does not fit with the demand for labor and which follows the xenophobic discourse of America first that the United States under Trump has also embraced.

A week has passed since Pedro Sánchez traveled to Algeria to try to make peace and re-establish political and economic relations that would ensure, above all, gas purchases. Relations had broken down after Spain accepted Morocco's plan for the Sahara, which disregarded the claim for self-determination and settled for simple autonomy. And this Spanish capitulation, unforgivable to the Algerians, came a few years after, in 2021, Spain's reception of Brahim Ghali, head of the Polisario Front, caused a crisis with Morocco that ended with the also illegal entry of 8,000 Moroccans through the Ceuta border. It is these antecedents that make us suspect that behind what is happening these days in Ceuta there is something more than the will of some young people to force their entry into Europe. Although it is difficult to believe that this could happen without, at least, the passivity of the Moroccan side, officially relations between Spain and Morocco are currently good and cooperation is maintained.

Football is the king of sports: the one that moves the most masses –digital and in-person– and the most passions. Sporting and national passions. The one that generates the most business, with fabulous television rights. The one that involves the most politics. We saw this in this World Cup, with the obscene interference of the American president Donald Trump, who has counted on the undisguised complicity of Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, a position he has held for a decade and in which he wishes to perpetuate himself.

Cronyism and nepotism, digital partisanship (appointments by decree by the political party apparatus once they access government) or the nineteenth-century "vuelva usted mañana", which made journalist Mariano José de Larra famous, along with the scourges of corruption and opacity, are commonplaces entrenched in the Spanish and Catalan administrations and in popular culture. How is it possible that, after fifty years of democracy, we still have not managed to have an efficient and meritocratic administration, at the service of citizens and not of the political whims of rulers?

Tourists are fleeing Bordeaux and its inhabitants have been breathing in the smoke from fires burning just 15 kilometers from their urban conurbation for days. For now, it has already been declared the largest that France has suffered in the last fifty years and yesterday the news was that a senior fire official stated on television that it could take "weeks or months" to be declared extinguished. More than 200,000 people have had to be evacuated from various towns in Gironde, but for now there are no plans to evacuate Bordeaux. However, those who can are leaving.

The excess of tourism ends up turning against the society that promoted and benefited from it. In the Balearic Islands, this has long been a social, economic, and environmental reality. Also in Catalonia, and especially in Barcelona. Through excess, we are killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. The tourist carrying capacity of cities and various territories has a limit beyond which the harmful collateral effects can become greater than the gains. We cannot renounce the wealth of tourism, but we must undoubtedly put a limit on it.

Paid holidays were, less than a century ago, a gain for the working class, with France as the first country to generalize them in 1936: 15 days for everyone. Since then, and especially after the Second World War, with the consolidation of the European welfare state, much progress has been made in holiday welfare. Only in this way can it be understood that tourism has become a global industry, with Catalonia-Barcelona as a privileged destination. But it is an industry of little added value which, paradoxically, is leaving people not without holidays, but without the possibility of enjoying them at the level of years past. More and more Catalans cannot afford long stays away from home.

After the most complicated school year in Catalan classrooms, with a final month marked by an unprecedented series of strikes, when practically the entire educational community is already on vacation, a new bucket of cold water arrives. This time on one of the international evaluation pillars. The latest PISA tests taken in Catalonia were a fiasco. It is a real disaster: the selection of students who took them was done incorrectly. In the rest of Spain, it was done correctly.

Alongside fires and heatwaves, this is also proving to be the summer of transport construction incidents: in a short time, we've had two sinkholes and an explosion. If winter was marked by the tragic accidents in Gelida and Adamuz, now, fortunately so far without loss of human life, we are suffering surprising ground collapses in major public works. What is happening to us?

The President of the United States, Donald Trump, is running a marathon to dynamite all the international rules that have been built over the years and, with his direct action, or with his alliances, to work towards a world in which, effectively, only the law of the strongest or, also, the law of the richest prevails. This is the case of the agreement he has signed with Saudi Arabia to allow the great Gulf power to enrich uranium in its own territory for nuclear fuel. In principle, it would not have military purposes, but, unlike other previous agreements with third countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, it is not foreseen, according to what has transpired so far, that there will be strict security clauses or the requirement of full access for inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. It simply mentions "high standards of nuclear safety" and "nuclear non-proliferation." Although it is an agreement that has been negotiated for many years, it was initially linked to Saudi Arabia's commitment to recognize the State of Israel - which was cut short after Hamas's attacks on October 7 - and had more limits than are now foreseen to be imposed.

The Ministry of Industry presented this Tuesday a subsidy program to encourage energy efficiency in industrial sectors (600 million euros in aid) and promote electric cars (400 million euros in aid, via the Autoplus call). The objective is for reindustrialization to go hand in hand with energy transition. According to data from the last month, the sale of electrified vehicles in Spain accounted for 23% of the total. All subsidies, for both cars and companies, will be retroactive to January 1st. And to certify the aid for the decarbonization of industry, actions from the last three years can be taken into account. Measures like these are being carried out by all European states. No one wants to be left behind.